Tom Weiss
A couple nights ago the official White House twitter feed sent out this picture. They did so after sending another tweet explaining that the President had just begun speaking at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Yesterday I saw the picture - but not the tweet which preceded it - and wondered how on earth the White House could think it was funny.
After a bit of research, I learned that the President had used this picture at the WHCD as the punch line for one of his jokes: "Anyway, this year, I've promised to use more executive actions to get things done without Congress. My critics call this the 'imperial presidency.' The truth is, I just show up every day in my office and do my job. I've got a picture of this I think."
I'm a big Game of Thrones fan - but I haven't yet read the books. I'm invested now in the on-screen characters and won't read the books until the series is over. I don't want to know what's coming.
Hereditary rule as the basis for a system of government is a given in the Game of Thrones universe. It's fun to watch the all the intrigue and deception that surround this "game" - a soap opera with blood and gore and dragons and white walkers and nudity. But nobody votes for the man sitting on the Iron Throne. And the various House leaders are accountable to no one except the people who want them dead for the thing they did to the guy at the place - the "thing", "guy", and "place" are, of course, different for each character.
Given that I don't know what's coming, it's quite possible I'll be forced to retract this statement at some point in the future: Daenerys Targaryen appears to be emerging as the exception to this rule. Initially acting on the same hereditary claim to the throne her brother pursued prior to his death, she now roams the desert, dragons in tow, freeing slaves and making statements like this: "I do not bring commands. I bring you a choice."
What a radical, classically liberal thought.
Freedom has been the theme of many an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie. Mel Gibson screams the word as he's being disemboweled at the end of Braveheart. Russell Crowe's dying words in Gladiator announce that the government in Rome will be returned to the people. Motion pictures need an antagonist, and often that antagonist is a repressive government.
This should create a quandary for the left. Of course bad dictators are bad. But what about enlightened, benevolent ones?
The latter type get to do all sorts of progressive things by fiat. They can declare the debate to be over and mean it - if they allow any debate at all. They don't have to worry about silly things like freedoms. People are essentially stupid, they say, and must defer to their bettors.
Each of the Game of Thrones characters subscribe to this idea to some degree. The accident of your birth determines your lot in life. Even if you have exceptional virtue, honor, integrity, or strength your station in life will never fundamentally change.
This is the idea that the Declaration of Independence turned on its head. Rights are not conferred upon the masses by a sovereign - all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.
Of course this doesn't lend itself to a compelling dramatic storyline (think the first half hour of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace). It also doesn't lend itself to government "getting things done."
Which brings me back to the White House's tweet. I suspect that the number of people in the White House and at the WHCD who looked at that picture and thought "If only..." is rather large. Tom Friedman remarked several years ago that he wishes we could be "China for a day." Dictators don't have to sell or defend their policy solutions. They don't have to argue with people shouting "freedom." They're able to force us to do the "right" thing regardless of whether or not we agree or the Constitution allows it.
The President's critics, Senator Ted Cruz foremost among them, have called him an imperial President. But here is the crux of Senator Cruz's argument: "But this should not be a partisan issue. In time, the country will have another president from another party. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law?"
A good example is Obamacare - after dozens of 'enforcement' decisions by the Executive Branch, what's stopping a Republican President in 2016 from declining to enforce the entirety of the ACA?
If all this is making national politics feel like a Game of Thrones episode, it means we've already centralized too much power into the hands of the people in Washington.
Where is our Daenerys?
I want choices, not commands.
Ted ElrickMrs. Kurylenko's third floor flat has a magnificent and unobstructed view of traditionally Russian-held territory, particularly of the revered Tree of Comradery when the sun's rays are no longer obstructed by the Crag of Solitude on June 15th. Putin has said this is "intolerable" except that he said it in Russian, however we lack the proper fonts to reflect that.
The sanctions very well could include possible immediate cessation of gluten-free Russian tea cakes at White House fundraisers designed to fatten the already obese mid-term election war chest. Press Secretary Jay Carney did admit, under moderate grilling from a Food Channel reporter with a fine array of seasonings the President is known to favor, that the First Lady was not troubled by an obese mid-term war chest, per se, however, she found the withdrawal of gluten-free tea cakes disconcerting since many of their most reliable donors are gluten intolerant.
There has been no word of Moscow's reaction to the possibility of maybe facing sanctions. But Carney could not definitively rule out they had not received a response from the Kremlin. Unfortunately, the White House translator had left earlier in the day to pick up some humus and pita chips for the traditional Cinco De Mayo party later in the evening and anything coming in over the wireless sounded like just so much "jibber, jabber."
Carney narrowly averted an awkward situation when 9-year-old ace reporter Little Bobby Billingsley of KATN (Kids Action Team Now), speculated that the real crisis involved Russian troops massing on "the border," not "a boarder." Carney deftly diffused the question, saying, "Hey kid, don't make me give you a time out."
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Steve Poling
Michael Sheldon
Stephen McDonaldWell worth the read given that these days you never know when you may find your reputation and your livelihood being sacrificed to the great gods Diversity and Tolerance. So it goes in what passes for 21st Century America.2. Don't think that you can reason your way out of it. Most people have the causality backwards. They think the purge is taking place due to whatever it is that they did or said. That's not the case. It is taking place because of who you are and what you represent to them. The truth is that the faction behind your prospective purge already wanted you out and they are simply using the nominal reason given as an excuse to get rid of you. [....]
3.Do not apologize! They will press you hard for an apology and repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven. Don't be fooled! They are simply looking for a public confession that will confirm their accusations, give them PR cover, and provide them with the necessary ammunition to expel you. Apologizing does nothing more than hand them the very weapon they are seeking.
The blog post below links to an article by James Jay Carafano on the 10 movies which, for him, define the Cold War. Any list of this nature is inherently personal but since I've been working on a post touching on conservative/libertarian themes in movies, I was a little surprised to see omitted from Jim's list the movie which, for me, defines the Cold War: The Hunt for Red October.
I was not a Tom Clancy fan during the 80s. I was too young to appreciate his genius. This movie adaptation of his debut novel introduced me to the rest of his body of work, and I was blown away. As a young Army officer I read Red Storm Rising in awe of Clancy's ability to fictionalize what we referred to as the "Fulda Gap" scenario - which by the time I read it following the fall of the Berlin Wall, was obsolete.
While the movie doesn't directly depict the hardships of living in Soviet Russia, it's premise - officers of a Soviet nuclear submarine plan to defect to the United States - hints at just how bad their lives were. The interplay between Sean Connery's character and the submarine's Political Officer also gives the audience a glimpse of just how repressive the Soviet government was. And Sam Neill's surprise that in the US he will be allowed to drive "state to state" with no papers hints at a reality Americans cannot fully understand.
Clancy didn't write "message fiction" - he would have been much less popular if he had. He did write insightfully about reality and it was this reality which made the story so compelling.
This movie also introduced me to Alec Baldwin, who is wonderful in the film. I learned much later that he is bat-crap crazy, but watching his performance here you realize why he is a star.
The other movie I would have included is a Clint Eastwood flick, Firefox. It wasn't a critical success and didn't make much at the box office, but it's depiction of life in the Soviet Union was very compelling. It also offered a haunting portrait of three Jewish scientists willing to give their lives to thwart their Communist oppressor's military plans. And Warren Clarke's portrayal of Pavel Upenskoy in the film was brilliant.
The special effects don't hold up well 30 years later, but Eastwood is great and there are quite a few still quotable lines, including this one from Dr. Baranovich:
Mr. Gant, you are an American. You are a free man. I am not. There is a difference. If I resent the men in London who are ordering my death, then it is a small thing when compared with my resentment of the KGB.